Time Warner Cable Will Increase Caps > better be by a lot.

reply to Lazlow

Re: better be by a lot.

You are forgetting that other countries have cable too and they have had these speeds and capacity for a while. I agree with you that splitting the nodes would not have given them much of a speed increase but it would have given them a capacity increase (which is the real issue). Even Docsis 1.0 had 38Mbps speeds(down), so they had the technology available to increase the speeds (to say 20 down) years ago(euro docsis 1.0 had 50Mbps down). If they had split the nodes when D2 first came out (not necessarily switching) they could now have both the advanced speeds and the capacity to handle those speeds.

Ahh yes... BUT.. these other countries are also late entrants into the game of Broadband, many of them. A lot of these countries you speak of have two things going for them over the U.S. which is: 1) they entered upwards to 10 years after us, and 2) they're landscape is much more compact so upgrading and rebuilds come much easier and quicker than the sprawls of the United States. They also get a lot of money from the government to build out and some of them are nationalizing their infrustructure, which in the Unites States does goes against our way of life.

Case in point.. in So Cal,, the government who put money into one of the muni-systems wanted the operator to filter out anything objectionable and pornographic. As unconstitutional as that demand is/was, that was the game they play.

I'll personally stick with a little slower growth to avoid big brother, for one, telling me what I can and can't see.

..oh, and don't forget.. that 38mb was per node shared amongst users. In my city, the nodes run about 250 homes each which is on the low side compared to some systems. The former TWC system in the south metro here was running 1200 homes per node. Imagine 38mb on even a 250 homes passed node.

Most of those same countries have 50Mbps(plus) available for sub $50 a month and many have 100Mbps available(at sub $80) in most metro areas. I would also remind you that much of the internet backbone in the US was made with government funding (1996?).

Cable has always been shared, it is shared with D1 and it will still be shared with D3. If you follow the latest studies management compensation went from 40X average employee in the 80-90s to 4000X now. Take some of that money and split the nodes. Instead of 250 home switch to 125, you could stick with docsis 1 until the prices drop, bring speeds up to 20Mbps, and still not have any more congestion than we have currently(no caps needed).